23

They turned back into the main body of the house. Sudden light stabbed his eyes, and Coleman Collins was standing in a column of flame beside the row of theatrical posters. Orange light danced on the opposite wall, on the ceiling. 'That was your shortcoming, you know,' the shadow said. 'You simply were not capable of learning the moral lessons. The Book would have been useless to you. It never did Speckle John much good, either, as far as I could see.'

'You perverted the Book,' Tom said. 'You perverted magic. Speckle John should have left you to die on that hillside. The fox should have torn out your throat.'

The elegant figure in the flame chuckled. 'Now you sound like Ouspensky.' He mimed yawning and then grinned. 'You know, they were afraid of me, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. That is why they carried on so. Afraid of me, like that ranter Crowley.' The flame had begun to consume itself from the bottom up.

Outside, fireworks battered in the sky.

The flame was a teardrop hanging in the air; only Collins' head was visible in it. 'And he was stronger than you, dear boy… ' The flame and the head vanished together.

He stood in the dark with Rose, feeling Del palpitating against his belly. 'You know, he's right. I can't do any of those things he does. He's bound to beat me, and he knows it.' He felt shock radiating out from her and he said, still with that fatalistic clarity, 'It doesn't mean I'm not going to try, but I can't do those things. I just can't.'

'Have you ever tried?' came her voice.

'No - not projecting myself like that.'

'Then try it.'

'Right now?'

'Sure.'

'I don't even know how to start.'

'But haven't you been getting better - haven't you been learning?'

'I guess.'

'Then just start. Try it. Now. For the sake of your confidence.'

It would not do his confidence much good if he failed, he reflected, but tried anyhow. It had to be like all the rest, he thought. It had to be a place in his own mind and all he had to do was find it. Suppose there were a mirror in front of you, Tom. Suppose you could see yourself. Suppose the mirror Tom could speak.

'You're better than he is, Tom,' Rose whispered.

Del tucked himself together even more compactly against Tom's skin, and Tom remembered flowing down into Skeleton's mind, how that had felt… that feeling of gaining and losing control simultaneously, of flowing out… his eyes fluttered, and a key turned within him as he thought of Skeleton's gibberish unreeling out toward him, and a ball of light momentarily flickered in the corridor.

'Oh, do it, do it now,' Rose pleaded.

Tom released it.

The Collector stood down there moving toward him with frustrated eyes and a foolish mouth -

KA-WHAMP! A rocket exploded over the house, big enough to send darts of light shooting in the window above the front door.

His mind jolted, and the Collector fell over. 'Sorry,' he said. He even laughed. 'But did you see? It was harmless that time. There was nobody inside it.'

'Put Tom down there,' Rose insisted.

Tom reached toward the key again, and imagined not a mirror but himself on the day he had met Del, and felt the flowing, the letting go, and another Tom Flanagan took shape in a ball of light down the hall. He was pulling a beanie down to two fingers balanced on his nose. He smiled, opened his mouth, and a paralytic croak issued from him. He disappeared.

'You see?' Rose said.

Then light poured out from the entrance of the living room and showed them the collapsed rubbery bundle which was the Collector, and Tom knew that he had moved it from the big theater just by thinking about Skeleton. He heard a whirring noise, as if machinery had been switched into life.

A second later, Humphrey Bogart walked into the hall from the living room.